Here's the research mentioned in the article: http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars/ProgBarHarrison.pdf http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/progr

Here's the research mentioned in the article: http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars/ProgBarHarrison.pdf http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/progressbars/ProgBarHa... Briefly, they took a process that proceeded linearly, applied an arbitrary function to the current progress, and displayed the result in the progress bar. The conclusion is that time taken is perceived as less when the progress appears to start slowly and then accelerate, even when the actual total time taken is the same.